Early in the morning (7 am), I jumped into the water at the traditional aggregation site of the Nassau Grouper -the site is located only a half-mile offshore. I started searching for the aggregation by free-dive drifting along the length of the site which is only 60 feet deep and which could be seen easily in the very clear waters. After an hour, and having swan 1 mile at the exact site and at the very same day of the full moon when I had previously seen thousands of Nassaus in the past, I did not find one Nassau Grouper or any evidence of spawning. The only interesting thing was a group of 10 red fin parrotfish spawning. Their reproductive movements were very similar to those of the groupers. In the afternoon (1 pm), I headed out south (1 mile from the traditional site) and by free-dive drifting I almost completed another mile following the reef edge. No Nassau groupers, but just a couple of black groupers.

Later on the same day, I was fortunate to meet a veteran fisher -who no longer goes out fishing after 50 years as a fisherman- and he told me “the grouper site off Mahahual has disappeared”. “Not only persistent fishing in the past has disturbed the aggregation, but also the noise produced by cruisers” –he said. Today, he is a small entrepreneur who buys and sells lobster and fish in Mahahual. “The aggregation now follows deeper pathways (80 feet deep) along the shelf edge, and occasionally arrives in shallower areas but not at the traditional site” –he added. Early January 2013, a fisher brought him about $700 kg (1,500 pounds) of Nassau Groupers speared by three persons in two days at a southern spot (Punta Tan) in deep waters (70 feet).

The following day, early in the morning I went again to the traditional site and spent two hours free-dive drifting. This time, I only found an aggregation of Margate (Haemulon album) and a solitary red hind (Epinephelus guttatus), but no Nassau groupers. Later on, I headed north, passing the famous pier, and swam half-mile at a site fishers had found Nassaus at in the past. There, I only found an aggregation of barracuda (30 fish) and an aggregation of Bermuda chub (Kyphosus sectatrix), but no Nassau groupers.

In conclusion, the Nassau Grouper still prevails off the Southern Mexican Caribbean. However, its migration has evidently experienced remarkable changes in routes and sites. Fishers are now dedicated to other activities and they just sporadically attempt to find the grouper aggregation along the shelf edge. A veteran fisher mentioned me the existence of other sites, where the Nassau still thrives. One of them still vibrant is that off Santa Julia, 15 km north of Xcalak (close to Belize) that represents a light of hope for the conservation of the Nassau Grouper in the Mexican Caribbean since it is located within a marine protected area. However, that would be another story to tell…soon.

Over the last two days or our quest to find Smith’s site, our team completed five more dives along the shelf near South Cat Cay before high winds and rough seas finally put an end to the expedition. Unfortunately, those final dives were similar to those we completed during the previous five days: beautiful reefs, warm and clear waters, but no evidence of even the smallest spawning aggregation of Nassau Grouper.

Krista hangs above the edge of the reef in search of a Nassau grouper aggregation that no longer exists/Krista nada sobre el borde del arrecife en busca de una agrupación de mero que ya no existe.

By the time the trip was finished, we had covered over 4.5 miles of shelf-edge habitat in search of a spawning aggregation site that “Smitty” estimated once held 50,000-100,00 fish and which has served as the baseline site for healthy Nassau Grouper spawning aggregations in the Caribbean for more than 40 years. Yet despite our best efforts, searching widely around the area indicated by Smith, we found absolutely no evidence or indication of any aggregation anywhere off South Cat Cay or, indeed, anywhere else in the Bimini Islands region. In fact, we saw only 5 adult Nassaus in 18 dives, each one solitary, and none showing any evidence of spawning.

Moreover, we saw only one or two boats on our daily 13-mile commute from South Bimini to South Cat Cay, and those few were always either harvesting the shallow waters for lobster and conch or fishing way offshore in search of red snapper or wahoo. If there had been a large aggregation there it would not have escaped attention.

As the days passed by and we spoke with more and more locals it became crystal clear that not only is the spawning aggregation completely gone from this site, but that few people today are even aware that it had ever existed. As one example, an older gentleman named Moxey, who has worked on Cat Cay for more than 30 years, said he’d never seen or heard about any fishing for Nassau grouper during these months. Speaking to some younger guys that work at the Cat Cay Yacht club, none had any recollection of grouper fisheries in the area. I think the honest words of Eslie Brown, the captain of this expedition, resonated the deepest with me. He said that when he first started fishing in the area back in the late 1970s he’d heard about Nassau grouper fishing down off South Cat Cay in January and February but never had the time to go check it out. However, by the time he started fishing Cat Cay in the early 1980s , no one was fishing groupers there anymore. It seems that the aggregation has long gone from this site.

I head back to California tomorrow, but the other members of the research team will continue to speak with older fishers in Bimini to get a better idea of when the last Nassau groupers were taken from the aggregation at South Cat Cay. Yet in the end, it really doesn’t matter all that much when it was that the aggregation collapsed. What matters most is that one by one and year after year, spawning aggregations of Nassau grouper are being wiped out, and we have yet to figure out a solution to break this vicious cycle and preserve these rare, spectacular areas and this beautiful, iconic, species.

Strong winds prevailed all night long, and into the morning and part of the afternoon. So, it was not possible to go out to check the aggregation site. However, I had a wonderful opportunity to chat with the fishers. I interviewed veterans who were straight in their answer: ”the grouper fishery off Mahahual no longer exists”! The Nassau grouper has never come back to the “pesquero” (fishery ground) in anything like the numbers there were in the past – they said. Some fishers have been visiting the site during all these years and never found the grouper aggregation again. Some other fishers suggested that the cruise pier built by 1997 nearby the site (1 km north) is responsible. They say that probably the noise the cruises produce is disturbing the aggregation. A fisher assured me that during early January 2013 he went to another place 45 km south of Mahahual, an area known “Rio Huach”. There, in a reef at 120 feet he found a small aggregation of about 100 Nassaus and, along with other two folks, speared about 70 fish in two days. This means that Nassau is still around but it does not reach the Mahahual´s traditional site. This evening, the winds are dying down and I finally could see the gorgeous full moon. I hope tomorrow Sunday will go to the Mahahual´s “pesquero” to witness by myself how the site looks like after 18 years and verify the “death of the Nassau grouper aggregation site”.

Day 4: The search continues… Forty three years ago, C. Lavett Smith was diving at this same spot where the Great Bahama Bank meets the Gulf Stream. His experience, in which he described an estimated 30,000 – 100,000 Nassau grouper aggregation, was remarkably different from ours. We took a quick morning dive to investigate a site known as the “Nassau Hole” where the mutton snapper (Lutjanus analis) are also known to aggregate in the early summer. We spotted one Nassau grouper at that site. Heading south, we continued surveying the area off Dollar Harbour that Smith described. We spotted two only solitary Nassau groupers, but later in the afternoon we found an aggregation of 100-200 creole wrasses that were pair spawning. It was a busy scene at the top of a 50′ coral mound, with black durgon and chromis appearing to eat the eggs that the creole wrasses released.

Creole wrasse, Clepticus parrai, in pair spawning

Day 5: Another day surveying the southern end of Dollar Harbour. The current reversed to run strongly from north to south and we covered a lot of ground in the first two dives. The visibility was still great but we saw only an occasional black or tiger grouper and no Nassau groupers. On the last dive we saw an aggregation of about 200 horse eye jacks exhibiting courtship behaviour on the edge of the wall. They were swimming sideways, pairing off and whorling before heading south along the wall.

We started early in the morning attempting to squeeze in 4 dives over a long day. Our first dive was in the same area as our last one yesterday. This is part of grand plan to work our way along the shelf edge from south to north of the Cat Cay area.

Then, we FINALLY spotted our first Nassau Grouper resting calmly on the shelf (70 feet deep) (see picture). Unfortunately, one grouper does not qualify as an aggregation, and we saw no other grouper. We did spot a nice-sized aggregation of horse eye jacks (~250 fish) greeting us briefly on our ascent and safety stop (see picture).

Yeah! Our first Nassau Grouper of the trip. Hey buddy – can you tell me where a few thousand of your friends are hanging out to spawn around here?/¡Oh sí! Nuestro primer mero del viaje. Oye compañero ¿podrías decirme dónde se encuentran desovando por ahí miles de tus amigos?

We dropped back down onto the location of the jacks for our third dive and saw them briefly – just before a boat full of tourists came along and its engine´s sound instantly scattered the entire school. The rest of that dive was uneventful, as the start of wall became too deep (120 feet), which led us to eventually abort the dive early. As we hit the surface, we discovered that the location of the third dive was well north of the prospective location of “Smitty’s site”, so we felt confident that it had been a good decision to quit the dive early.

A school of horse eye jacks breezes through as we begin our ascent to the surface/Un cardumen de jureles pasa a medida que ascendemos a superficie.

For the final dive, we moved inshore of the third dive to check out a shallower reef (50-70 feet). While we didn’t see any Nassaus, we were entertained by some courting creole wrasses and an aggregation of Bermuda chubs (80 fish) racing around actively. They showed the typical following and mobbing behavior used by groupers and snappers during courtship.

Tomorrow, we plan to head farther south and start our northward migration once again…

The focus of our quest for the Nassau grouper aggregation, based on Smith’s original description, is somewhere off the west coast South Cat Cay (red circle) in search of the “original” Nassau Grouper spawning site. We’re headed out for three drift dives. Let’s see what happens. Hoping the weather holds.

In the mid 1980s, I heard for the very first time about an astonishing event taking place off Mahahual, in the Quintana Roo’s coast, Southern Mexican Caribbean. A friend of mine described it as “a spectacular and massive grouper event”. Later, I decided to find for myself, in the scientific literature, descriptions of that event. I found the paper of A.K. Craig (1969), where he described the Nassau grouper annual reproductive migrations off Belize, and he mentioned about a “grouper run” off Quintana Roo, Mexico. In 1989, I began my own annual migration to Mahahual to find what was considered a traditional aggregation site for the Nassau grouper. Veteran fishers helped me identify the site they used to name the “pesquero del mero” (‘grouper fishery’ in English). I documented this incredible event: thousands of 20-pound Nassau groupers aggregated in a less than a half-hectare area. I monitored the event for the following six years, until the aggregation stopped forming in 1996. In 1997 I moved abroad for graduate studies in the University of Puerto Rico.

Mahahual, in the Mexican Caribbean.

Returning to Mexico, in 2005, I had no opportunity to return to Mahahual to revisit the Nassau grouper site to look for evidence of recovery. In fact, over the last 18 years nobody has monitored the aggregation to know if the fishing ban was helpful. Now, in 2013, I am finally returning for the January full moon, supposedly to be the best moon in terms of the magnitude of the aggregation. Unfortunately, Day 1 2013 at Mahahual received me with bad weather — a very rainy day — that prevented me reaching the aggregation site even though it is not far from the coast. Hopefully, winds and rain will die down for tomorrow. If so, I will jump into the water to take a look at the site after 18 years.